JCRC: Jewish Community Relations Council

The 1930s The 1940s The 1950s The 1960s The 1970s The 1980s The 1990s 2000-present

2000 to present: History of the JCRC

September 2000 - The second intifadah begins, and JCRC establishes a special Middle East Project to launch an education and advocacy effort to manage the local effects surrounding the crisis.
February 2001 - JCRC's innovative approach to identifying trends and needs in the community leads to the development and incubation of an advocacy project supporting local Mizrahi community members. JCRC gathers these Mizrahi Jews to share their experiences as Jewish refugees from Arab countries, and Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) is born. Today, JIMENA serves an important role in broadening understanding of the Middle East conflict, including in the international community, the halls of Congress, hundreds of communities and dozens of college campuses nationwide.
February 2001 - JCRC adopts a position on Charitable Choice, the right of institutions that are primarily houses of worship to compete with other nonprofits for government contracts to provide social services. Based on long-standing concern that to preserve the separation of church and state, public funds should not go to pervasively sectarian institutions, JCRC advocates that charitable choice require that service recipients are not pressured to participate in religious education or indoctrination, that beneficiaries do not discriminate on the basis of religion or refusal to participate in a religious practice, that service provider organizations establish separate accounts, institutions receiving public funds be prohibited from discriminating on the basis of religion in staff hirings, and that the state provide a non-religious alternative to any individual requesting such services.
December 2001 - JCRC releases its first Strategic Plan. The process is chaired by Past President, Daniel Grossman, who says, JCRC's "reputation transcends from our local work to the national and international realms, where we are known for applying community relations principles innovatively and progressively. Our confidence in the strength of the organization is what prompted us to initiate a strategic planning process; we sought to go from strength to strength."
October 2002 - In the wake of a number of anti-Semitic and virulently anti-Israel incidents at UC Berkeley, Jewish community leaders meet with UC Chancellor Robert Berdahl to discuss intimidation of pro-Israel students on campus, a course offered on the poetics of Palestinian resistance by an instructor who has advertised that "conservative students need not apply," and other issues of Jewish community concern. At the meeting the Chancellor announces the establishment of a $100,000 fund to bring in speakers from diverse political perspectives on the Middle East in an effort to promote and model civil dialogue. He expresses strong opposition to divestment efforts against Israel.
May 2002 - Jewish student activists at San Francisco State University hold peace rallies in support of Israel, where anti-Israel protestors hurl verbal threats and physically intimidate Jewish students. President Robert Corrigan issues a strongly worded statement that says, "A small but terribly destructive number of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, many of whom were not SFSU students, abandoned themselves to intimidating behavior and statements too hate-filled to repeat." The President requests that the San Francisco District Attorney investigate and take legal action against any who may have committed a crime, while the University takes action against any student who violated campus policy.
May 2002 - Following an extensive analysis of the SF Chronicle's articles, editorials, and opinion pieces, which illustrates significant bias against Israel, JCRC organizes a delegation of community leaders to meet with S.F. Chronicle. Analysis after the meeting with the Chronicle editorial staff demonstrates progress in addressing community concerns. JCRC continues to actively monitor the local media.
September, 2002 - JCRC participates in the United Religions Initiative Global Assembly in Brazil, where more than 300 people from 37 countries, representing varying faiths from around the world, gather to explore issues of poverty, peace, human equality, and multiethnic relations.
December 2002 - JCRC mobilizes several hundred community members gather outside the Egyptian Consulate in San Francisco to protest the broadcasting of "Horseman Without a Horse," a 41-part series on Egyptian state-run television that draws on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to suggest a Jewish plot to dominate the world. As an outgrowth of our vigil, several months later we are asked to host a meeting with the Egyptian Ambassador to the United States, who is visiting from Washington, to hear our concerns.
February 2003 - JCRC writes and, in its consensus building process, creates near unanimity, on a statement on the ongoing Middle East conflict. The statement is brought to the national Jewish Council for Public Affairs umbrella, where it is the first resolution in decades to pass without a dissenting vote. The statement calls for peaceful resolution, a commitment from the Palestinians to express grievances through diplomatic channels rather than violent actions, the United States to continue to mediate, comprehensive reform of the Palestinian Authority, and mourns the loss of life among all involved parties. The statement also comments on international terrorism, calling on the United States and international community to intensify pressure on governments that "finance and glorify terrorism."
October 2003 - JCRC continues to ensure fair presentations of Israel, Jews and Judaism in California textbooks. A Bay Area curriculum developer prepares a biased unit on the Arab-Israeli conflict that provokes an outcry. JCRC challenges it and persuades the developers to, for the first time ever, stop selling the curriculum and completely redesign it.
March 2004 - With the emergence of a possible campaign to make a United States Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, JCRC revisits its position on the issue. JCRC creates a consensus position opposing a national effort, which states this is "a time of historic and dramatic moment in the battle against discrimination of gays and lesbians...we strongly oppose a proposed constitutional amendment on marriage, an amendment whose practical and symbolic effect could well be to set the clock back even further and perpetuate discrimination. The amendment process to our Constitution should continue to be used, as it has been in the past, to grant and expand rights not to deny and diminish them."
May 2004 - Santa Clara County holds its first county-sponsored Israel Cultural Day. The event is the culmination of advocacy and outreach efforts by the Peninsula JCRC and JCRC of Greater San Jose. Over 200 attendees see Israel through song, dance, art, technology, food and humor. Chair of the Board of Supervisors Pete McHugh is a major co-sponsor of the event and welcomes the West Coast Israeli Consul General with a key to the city.
August 2004 - JCRC leads the Bay Area's effort to educate the local community about the plight of persecuted Muslims and other non-Arab minorities in the Darfur region of Western Sudan. JCRC gathers coalition partners in other ethnic and faith communities to educate their constituents through news stories, action alerts, sermons from the pulpit, and small parlor meetings where fundraising occurs to assist in the relief effort. JCRC organizes a rally to demonstrate against the genocide in Sudan, and brings a Sudanese refugee, Cambodian and Armenian, Catholic and Protestant, African-American and Jewish, and other community leaders to speak out about the humanitarian crisis.
October 2004 - JCRC increases its campaign for Presbyterian Church USA to repeal its resolutions calling for divestment from Israel and continued efforts to convert Jews to Christianity.
January, 2005 - Due to overwhelming criticism from the Jewish community on the bias present in their children's public schools and textbooks, JCRC embarks on a major national initiative to review textbook treatment of Jews, Judaism and Israel and to advocate for substantive changes in those books submitted for statewide adoption.
Over 400 supporters gather at the S.F. Jewish Community Center to view the West Coast premiere of "The Forgotten Refugees", featuring many leaders from JCRC's Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa.
May, 2005 - JCRC and the Holocaust Center of Northern California, in cooperation with the Jewish Community Federation and JCF Endowment Fund and Jewish Family and Children's Services, hosts "Eyewitness to History" - where nearly 400 survivors born in more than 20 European countries for a luncheon in their honor on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust.
August, 2005 - JCRC's Middle East Policy Committee approves a new consensus statement, and the Metropolitan JCRC approves the slightly revised statement unanimously. The statement supports the Israeli government's disengagement plan while making clear that the burden was on the Palestinian leadership to put an end to terrorist activities.
JCRC and its allies speak out against KRON's anti-Israel programming, and in discussion with JCRC staff and lay leaders, the station solicits our suggestions regarding ways to make the issues in the Middle East conflict relevant to local viewer - we gave a number - and in utilizing JCRC as a resource in the future.
October, 2005 - JCRC leads humanitarian efforts after the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina. JCRC encourages contributions to the Jewish Community Federation's Hurricane Relief Fund, in addition to co-sponsoring a clothing-drive in Belmont, and the formation of the Jewish Coalition for Literacy (JCL) Katrina Relief Book Drive, where 100% of the funds donated will be used to purchase children's books at Barnes and Noble to be distributed by our volunteer representative there.
November, 2005 - JCRC's Institute for Curriculum Services achieves its first major textbook victory: the State Board of Education adopts sixth grade books produced by 9 publishers. All of them contain significant changes requested by ICS that make the books' presentation of Jewish history and Judaism more accurate and less likely to promote anti-Semitism.
March, 2006 - JCRC Executive Director, Rabbi Doug Kahn, joins a small interfaith delegation traveling with Catholic leaders from San Francisco to Rome for the ceremonies marking the elevation of former Archbishop of San Francisco William Levada to the position of Cardinal. The San Francisco delegation represents the only interfaith group at the Vatican, and reveals the depth of our strong local interfaith community internationally.
JCRC completes its pilot four-part adult education series at the First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley. The series arises out of our pro-active efforts aimed at turning the tide away from divestment in the Presbyterian community.
August, 2006 - After the tragic shooting at the Seattle Jewish Federation building, JCRC takes the lead on organizing heightened and improved community-wide security. JCRC is the go-to organization for assisting organizations implement and affectively discuss the improved security measures.
In response to the on-going war between Israel and Lebanon, JCRC organizes pro-Israel actions in the Bay Area, including a rally attended by 1,500 people, including special-guests U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, founder of Arabs-for-Israel Nonie Darwish, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Reverend Doug Huneke and many more; more than 2,000 people attend Emergency Solidarity Gatherings in Marin, Palo Alto, San Mateo, Petaluma, Oakland, Lafayette and in Santa Rosa, where participants hear analysis of the situation, eyewitness accounts and calls for action, in addition to receiving educational materials and learning about tips for effective action alerts.
November, 2006 - JIMENA attends the Jerusalem Conference for the Campaign for Rights and Redress, and participates in the launch of the international effort to register and document Jewish refugees from Arab lands. JIMENA's programs are highlighted during the conference as excellent examples of how to organize the Mizrahi community on behalf of Jewish refugees from Arab lands and on behalf of Israel.
JCRC launches Project Reconnections, a unique experiment to bring together key Jewish social justice activists in the progressive and mainstream communities to dialogue about wedge issues in the Jewish community.
JCRC helps concerned parents at Davidson Middle School in the San Rafael City School District dialogue with the school about a 7th grade assigned reading with anti-Semitic undertones, The Bronze Bow. The book is no longer a part of the curriculum.
April, 2007 - JCRC brings a delegation of distinguished gay and lesbian public officials and civic leaders to Israel to learn about Israel's remarkable social service institutions, politics, history, and gay life in Israel.
July, 2007 - Executive Director, Rabbi Doug Kahn, celebrates his 25th anniversary with JCRC. From his activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 80s and overseeing the creation of JIMENA and ICS, to ongoing educational efforts on campuses, including: marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust by honoring the soldiers who liberated the concentration camps and�observing the 50th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.
Regina Bublil Waldman, Chair of JIMENA is invited to speak at a Congressional Human Rights Caucus session chaired by Representative Tom Lantos and devoted to the subject of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
September, 2007 - JCRC organizes 16 Jewish organizations and nearly 100 volunteers towards the first ever Jewish Volunteer Day at Project Homeless Connect - a San Francisco one-stop-shop initiative that provides extensive and vital services for the city's homeless through five annual events. Services include shelter services, dental care, eye exams, ids, employment services, medical exams, food and groceries. Executive Director, Rabbi Doug Kahn, offers the opening inspirational address to the 1,000 volunteers present.
November, 2007 - The controversial Palestinian mural at San Francisco State University (SFSU) is inaugurated with the crucial revisions JCRC asked for, for example, the elimination of the anti-Semitic handala key, signifying the Right of Return, and the destruction of Israel.
JCRC Middle East Project Director Yitzhak Santis and JCRC Legislative and Intergroup Relations Director Jessica Trubowitch organize a Church-Israel Strategy Summit, bringing together Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopalian ministers along with Rabbis and JCRC lay leaders and staff to develop a more comprehensive approach to a fair-minded treatment of Israel in the denominations.
December, 2007 - JCRC is informed of a piece of art displayed in the window of the Pacific Art League in Palo Alto where an American flag's star field are replaced with Stars of David on a blood red background. The artist's rendition of Old Glory is superimposed with images of Abu Ghraib, immediately leading one to conclude that the piece is anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. Karen Stiller, JCRC Peninsula Director, with Reverend Archer Summers and Middle East Policy Director, Yitzhak Santis, meet with the artist and gallery representatives, and after a JCRC presentation on the use of anti-Semitic tropes in art, the artist volunteers to cover the offending art and hang a note which included the following lines: "Through a lack of knowledge and understanding of the implied symbolism of the Star of David on the American flag, I now realize I was giving a hateful message towards the Jewish Faith that I absolutely did not intend". By not making any assumptions about the artist or her message, we are able to provide an important learning-experience for her and the community at-large.
December 2007 - ICS representatives meet with senior staff of publishing companies Harcourt, Pearson, Teacher's Curriculum Institute, McDougall Littell, and Wright Group further building and strengthening relationships with these key influentials in the American textbook industry.
January, 2008 - Ruth Pearl, mother of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, directly engages President George W. Bush on the plight of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, leading the Jerusalem Post to conclude "Official: Bush aware of Jewish refugees' plight".
March 2008 - Representatives from JCRC attend a workshop led by Reverend Sandra Olewine of the Methodist Church in Millbrae on the Israel/Palestine conflict, and are disconcerted by the clear bias of the presentation despite the presenters' pronouncement of balance.
JCRC Middle East Project Director Yitzhak Santis and JCRC Executive Director Doug Kahn attend a meeting on the direction of the Methodist Church vis-�-vis Israel at a conference held by United Methodist Women at their Northern California headquarters.
April 2008 - JCRC's annual trip to Israel comprised of influential ethnic, religious, university leaders and public officials provided a closer insight into the lives of the Israeli people and their thoughts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The trip includes many meetings with leaders in Israeli society, including with Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman from the Shalom Hartman Institute discussing the moral dilemmas facing Israel.
May 2008 - The United Methodist Church defeats five anti-Israel divestment resolutions with the aid of a huge effort put forth by national Jewish organizations and local JCRCs. Yitzhak Santis, Director of JCRC's Middle East Project and Jessica Trubowitch the Director for Intergroup relations work together to organize an "Israel-Church Strategy Summit."
Peninsula Regional Director, Karen Stiller works with the Pastor of the Millbrae United Methodist Church and receives an invitation to a "study session" on "Israel and Palestine."
Rabbi Marvin Goodman, Executive Director of the Northern California Board of Rabbis organizes a meeting of the BOR and JCRC Director, Doug Kahn and Director of the Middle East Project, Yitzhak Santis present on the divestment issue to the 40 local rabbis in attendance and urges them to extend the concern to their Methodist clergy colleagues.
June 2008 - JCRC representatives attend the PCUSA General Assembly in San Jose where they present at committee hearings, meet with delegates, and serve as a vital resource representing the concerns of the Jewish community.
July 2008 - The General Assembly vote to focus on balance in relation to Israelis and Palestinians. All of the overtly anti-Israel overtures, including the SF Presbytery's are defeated and two overtures that are explicitly fair are passed.
A resolution passed that supported the Amman Call, a document that blames Israel exclusively and takes the side of the Palestinians and demands a "right of return" of Palestinian refugees to Israel.